Ghana’s inflation rate declined further to 6.3 percent in November, a 1.7 percentage point decline compared to the 8.0 percent recorded the previous month, according to the latest data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) on Wednesday.
Alhassan Iddrisu, the government statistician at the GSS, who addressed the media, said that the figure is the lowest inflation rate since the rebasing of the inflation basket in 2021 and the 11th consecutive decline since December last year.
“Compared to October, food inflation declined 2.9 percentage points to 6.6 percent in November, while non-food inflation also declined 0.8 percentage points to 6.1 percent from the previous month’s level of 8.2 percent,” Iddrisu said.
Meanwhile, the inflation rate for locally produced and imported items stood at 6.8 percent and 5.0 percent, respectively, in October, compared to 8.0 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively, a month earlier.
Iddrisu observed that inflation for imported items has been declining at a faster rate than for locally produced items due to several factors, including the strengthening of the local cedi currency against all major foreign currencies and the possible drop in prices of imported goods in their source countries.
He added that the current inflation rate is almost half of the end-of-year projection of 11.5 percent by the government and the central bank, due to the significant declines in food and non-food inflation.
“There are some policies the government has introduced that bode well for inflation. One of them is fiscal consolidation, which has seen the lowering of the deficit with a positive primary balance of 1.5 percent of GDP over the first nine months of the year,” the government statistician stated.
He added that the monetary policy decisions and exchange rate policy of the Bank of Ghana are also contributing significantly to the disinflation process.
In November, Ghana’s central bank cut its benchmark lending rate by another 350 basis points to 18 percent, as inflation continued to ease.